Garden Gladness

I don't know about you, but I love watching Monty Don on Gardener's World on a Friday evening and every time I do, it makes me want to get out there and potter about in our garden.  Being a city garden it is not very big and was very overgrown and neglected when we moved here six years or so ago.  The house had been rented out to some young people for a few years and I don't think they were at all interested in gardening, save for growing a particular illegal plant in the basement.   After a bit of love and attention it is now a lovely oasis that we enjoy and that is filled with plants that I love.  To be honest I don't see the point of having anything in your garden that you don't love.  Life is far too short and there are far too many beautiful things out there to put in it.

In the first couple of years of living here, I was studying at a horticultural college part-time for a year, for an RHS Certificate.  I gradually developed the garden along with my new found plant knowledge which was fun.  I also had access to some beautiful plants that were sold in the college shop or that we took cuttings of and many of them found their way into the garden at remarkably reasonable prices or completely for free.  Most weeks I came home with different plants to build up the garden.  Some survived, some didn't.  I enjoyed that time, completely indulging myself horticulturally, but haven't quite felt as enthusiastic since.

I must admit that in the last few years I have neglected the garden somewhat and let it get a bit overgrown and woody, and I am in the process of trying to get it back under control by clearing some of it.  I am hoping to add an injection of new plants and colours to some parts of it.

I don't like a particularly high maintenance garden, but I do like to have some year round interest.  My partner takes care of the grass, so all I need to do is weed the borders from time to time, prune the fruit trees and bushes and give perennials the chop in the autumn.  I like to have some plants that do part of the work for me, such as hardy geraniums which just spill over the front edge of one of the borders and block out any weeds, but give so much back with their pretty flowers all summer long.

Of the plants currently in the garden, I particularly love the beautiful  flowers of the Potentilla,  Astrantia and Aquilegia.   I have a few Potentillas in the garden which seem to flower constantly through the summer months.  They are not actually flowering yet though so I can't provide a photo, but here's the Aquilegia instead, looking very pretty.

I love the scent of the orange blossom which is just starting to bloom and the lemon balm which I have used for making lemon balm tea on occasion. 

I love the early beauty of the hellebores that flower in the winter/spring months.  I have several hellebores which have mostly been transferred to the back from the front garden when the building work started, but they seem to have settled in well and are flourishing in their new positions.

I love the silky soft grey foliage of the lamb's ear and the spring catkins that hang from the corkscrew hazels, the spring blossoms on the fruit trees/bushes and the lovely tiny flowers and fruit of the wild strawberry.  They taste so sweet.

My garden isn't anything special, but to me it is a place where I can potter, plot, plan and plant, express a bit of creativity and then sit back and just enjoy.  It gives me a lot of pleasure when I do get around to doing some work in it and I would hate to be without it.  Gardening just feels like such a peaceful and positive activity, a perfect distraction and escape from the trials and tribulations of daily life.  How do you feel about your garden?